


Sticks and Stones Don't Break My Bones

by Shadow_Chaser



Series: In Blinded Skies [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blankie should be a character at this point, Children being children, Episode: s01e01 Into the Ring, Episode: s01e07 Stick, Episode: s02e17 Melinda, For those who are wondering it'll never turn romantic - it's strictly platonic, Gen, Matt and Skye have a very cute friendship, Skye always tries to be helpful, St. Agnes Orphanage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3787084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Chaser/pseuds/Shadow_Chaser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt's hearing becomes super sensitive and Skye tries to help the only way she can - with Blankie.  Referencing "Episode 7 - Stick" of "Daredevil."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

Mary chewed her lower lip and hugged Blankie closer to her as she waited beyond the door to Matt's room. He was screaming again and two Sisters had already gone in, trying to calm him down. She could hear the whispered prayers, the words she knew by heart, but she could also hear the Sisters murmuring if Matt had the devil inside him. That frightened her; the devil was supposed to be evil, a horned reddish being that supposedly ate you at night if you were not good. At least that was what Katie and a few of Katie's older friends said.

She didn't like Katie's older friends that much. They occasionally shoved her too hard, hitting her while laughing and only saying that they were joking and not to take things so seriously. Katie wasn't mean like them, but sometimes Mary didn't like to see her friend with them. She didn't like how Katie sometimes acted when she wasn't with her. Plus it seemed like Katie didn't have as much time to help her with her homework at the local school now. She was doing okay, her reading a bit of a struggle since she got her letters mixed up, but she really liked math. Numbers she could work with. Katie had liked when she helped her with her work, and had in turn helped her with her reading homework, but now, it seemed like Katie liked to just watch some of the older boys and girls than anything else.

So Mary had decided that Matt would help her; he had proved he was really good at reading and had tried to ask him for help, but he didn't really know how to help her read except for the weird bumps and spiral notebooks of plastic-like paper he seemed to always have with him. He did however, help her on her math homework whenever she needed someone to help her study by saying the problems out loud and letting her puzzle out the answer.

But even that had slowly stopped as Matt had started to wake up screaming, sometimes even when he was awake. He would shake, clamp his hands around his ears and twist and turn, scattering his notebooks, pens, pencils, everything across the small room he had to himself. Mary wasn't jealous that Matt had his own room; she knew that some of the kids who became orphans came with money, but no one who wanted them. The Sisters housed them in their own private rooms whereas, people like her, who came with no money, no name, were housed with others to minimize space. The only thing she was a bit jealous of was that the ones who stayed in the single rooms got adopted more quickly. But she had long decided in her six years – nearly seven – that she would rather be with her friends than be alone in a room.

But even she felt sorry for Matt, all alone in his room, screaming again.

She watched, absently chewing her thumb again and hugged Blankie closer as the door opened to Matt's room, letting out the sudden loudness of his breathless gasps of pain. The two Sisters that had gone in hurried out, closing the door behind them and muffling Matt's gasps as the Mother Superior hurried up to them.

“Well?” Mary tightened her grip on Blankie as the Mother Superior spoke quietly.

“We need to get in touch with him,” one of the Sisters shook her head, wiping her hands on her habit. Mary noticed that she looked like she was crying and it made her want to cry too. Why was her friend in such pain? Why was he screaming like that?

“Agatha?” the Mother Superior looked at the other Sister who nodded.

“He's getting worse, Mother Superior. He might be able to help by the Grace of God,” she made the motion of the cross on her chest before the three headed away. Mary watched and heard their footsteps go down the stairs before she glanced at the closed door to Matt's room.

She chewed her lower lip again, absently pulling at it with a few of her fingers before she wiped it on Blankie and mustered her courage. It scared her to hear Matt like that, but maybe Blankie could help. She walked the few steps towards his room and knocked, taking a small step back to wait for him to say enter. She was told that it was far more polite than barging in, unlike the last time she had bounded into the four-person room she shared with Katie and two others. Katie had been bright red and apparently had looked like she ran a marathon or something, even though it was just herself in the room. Mary did not know what had happened, but Katie had yelled at her to knock first next time she entered anyone's room.

She could hear the muffled gasps and small cries of pain, the quick breath that sounded like someone trying to whistle, but failing at it because there was too much air blown in. “Matt?” she asked quietly, knocking once more, but there was no answer and Mary frowned. Maybe he wouldn't yell at her this time for barging into his room as she opened the door a crack and peered in.

He was shaking on the bed, his sheets a tangled mess, his feet kicking everywhere as he clamped his hands over his ears. She bit her lip and wanted to cry as she watched him, head turned this way and that. Even his funny red glasses were askew on his face, his teeth bared, his breath making that awful whistling sound. “M-Matt?” she whispered, but he did not answer nor even look towards her before she pushed her way in and closed the door quickly behind her.

That was when she took in the gigantic mess his room had become. His backpack was sitting in the corner, but his notebooks were spilled all over the place as well as pens, pencils, and all sorts of things. “M-Matt?” she started again as she crept forward, slowly unraveling Blankie from her shoulders and crumpling it into a ball as she approached him. “I...I brought Blankie-”

“I-It hurts...” he hissed out and she stopped, staring at him as he twisted back and forth, “too loud...”

Mary blinked, looking at his closed windows before shaking her head, “But Matt...”

His face twisted into a grimace as he seemingly pressed his hands further against his ears, as if he could block whatever was making the near-silence of the room out, and seemingly did not hear her. She frowned before making her decision. She gripped most of Blankie in one of her hands and with her other, reached out, grabbing at one of her friend's hand before pulling it slightly towards her-

“No!” he shouted-

And shoved part of Blankie into his hand before releasing it. “Blankie will help! Blankie will-”

She watched with surprised eyes as he suddenly stopped, taking his hands off of his ears before just as quickly wrapping Blankie around his head and clamping his hands back onto his ears. She waited for a few seconds as his breath slowly relaxed from the frantic gasps to an almost hiccuping, but far less stressed gasp. “Matt?” she ventured carefully, watching him use Blankie like a makeshift pillow-head cover thing like the Sisters' habits.

“...Thank...you...” he gasped out quietly, his breath still labored, but nonetheless Mary smiled.

“You're welcome,” she replied and quietly left the way she had come in.

* * *

It was four hours later that Matt started to scream again and it was only then that Mary realized Matt had tried hard not to scream for her. Maybe Blankie had helped, but she did not know as she watched from her door once more.

It was another hour later that she saw one of the Sisters walk by with an old man with a wrinkled face and a shock of white hair. She saw his white stick and knew that he was blind as they stopped in front of Matt's door.

Two hours after that, Matt left St. Agnes with the blind man and Mary knew that the old man had adopted him. It was only later that night that she realized he also took Blankie with him.

Two _years_ after that, Matt returned.


	2. Part 2

She absently scuffed at her chalk drawing on the concrete steps that led up to St. Agnes before reaching down and scribbling random lines again. “So how were the Bernhardts?” she asked as Katie randomly drew patterns in a small patch of sand that had once been in the snowbanks, now melted with the first warm day of spring.

“Worked me like a servant the two months I was there,” Katie replied, “then one of the girls tried to double dog dare me to rob the local bodega.”

“You didn't, right?” she looked at her friend who tucked a long piece of her shiny straight black hair behind her ear.

“Of course I did. Then blamed it on the girl who blamed it on me, and I got sent back here,” Katie rolled her eyes, and she sighed.

“Katie-”

“Mary...”

“It's Skye, you idiot, not Mary,” she pursed her lips at her older friend who only shrugged.

“Only good thing to come out of your six months spent with-”

“Mrs. Burke and Mr. Burke,” she replied quickly to fill in the pause before she grimaced a little, “I...didn't really know them that well when they died...”

“Well enough for you to get some money on you moneybags,” Katie only looked at her, her eyes going up and down at one of the many new clothes she had been given when she had been adopted by the elderly couple and Skye shook her head.

“It's in a trust fund, Katie. Even I don't know it, so no, I can't share it with you, even if I wanted to,” she could see the barely hidden jealousy in her friend's hungry gaze.

“Yeah, well, enough for your own room,” Katie waved an absent hand in the air, “lucky. I still have to room with that bitch-”

“Hey! Twenty-five cents into the swear jar-”

“Don't get me started on that-”

“Twenty-five-”

“This place is a shithole, don't you start too Skye,” Katie glared at her and Skye drew back, frightened by the ferocity of her gaze. She scuffed her foot against the chalk as she looked down, a frown on her face.

“I was only kidding Katie...geez,” she muttered mostly under her breath, “stop being mean...”

“Stop being mean...” she heard the faint sarcastic echo from her friend before Katie laughed, a bitter high-pitched sound, “Skye, you'd better best realize that this place will always been a shithole, a dump, where no one wants us and everyone wants _something_.” Katie suddenly dropped the chalk she was using and ran inside, her face twisted as if it was broken in some significant way. Skye did not know what it was, but felt like someone was making it hard to swallow – like a painful lump had risen in her throat as she angrily swiped at her face.

She blinked and stared at the wetness on her hands and realized that she was crying. She sucked in a breath, the sudden sniffle loud in her own ears before she hastily wiped at her face again. Why was Katie being so mean all of the sudden? She had seemed happy even in the halls of the school the Bernhardts had sent her too. It was the same school that Mr. and Mrs. Burke had enrolled her – a fancier school where they all wore uniforms and gave her special attention to her reading and comprehension. She had loved the math portions, especially when they sat her in front of a monitor one of the teachers called a C-R-T and taught her how to use her numbers in the lines of code that only she could read in what they called a DOS window.

She wiped angrily at her eyes again, giving a small cry at the sting of the chalk on her fingers getting into her eye and rubbed furiously at them again. It itched now, aside from even more tears streaming down one eye. She considered getting up and running to one of the Sisters' office for them to look at it, when a pair of tear-blurred feet stopped in front of her and something scratchy and woolen was shoved into her face.

“Here,” she blinked and looked up to see Matt standing before her, still looking about the same in the two years since she had seen him. There was a tentative smile on her face. “Blankie didn't make me cry, so you shouldn't cry either.”

Almost all thoughts of Katie being mean fled with her as she smiled, grabbing Blankie and hugging it close to her, breathing in the new smells her blanket had acquired after she had thought it lost for the last two years. “Blankie!” she muffled her words happily and looked back up at Matt who had a small smile on his face. “You're back?”

“...Stick...left me,” Matt looked a little sad and Skye noticed that his lower lip quivered a little, but he did not cry.

“Stick?” she glanced down at his white stick, wondering what he was talking about before she realized that he meant the blind man that had come to see him two years ago. “Oh...that man's name was Stick?”

“...Yeah,” Matt tapped his stick towards her left side and she moved over a little before patting the stone stairs with her hand. She watched as Matt gingerly lowered himself to sit down next to her, dumping his backpack next to her with a sigh. “Took me a few days to realize he wasn't coming back...came back here...”

Skye nodded before she realized that Matt could not see her movement, “I nodded...I'm sorry Matt...”

“It's okay,” he shrugged as if it was nothing, but there was something off about his movement. Skye pursed her lips before realizing that Matt's hands looked a lot stronger, even a little more calloused. In fact, he moved a little bit differently than she remembered, as if the sounds that had plagued him was not bothering him anymore.

“He helped with...?” she reached out and gently touched the tip of his ears to indicate what she meant.

“...After a fashion,” Matt replied before sighing, “so, anything changed while I was gone?”

“I got adopted,” Skye realized that whereas Matt was quiet and studious before, he seemed a lot more different, maybe a little more confident. Maybe it was because of the old blind man Stick's help, or something, but Matt seemed a little more...on edge with his confidence, as if he tried not to care for anything in the world, but failed to. She had not seen her friend in two years, but it seemed like Matt wasn't angry like Katie or being mean to her. Plus, he had returned Blankie to her, as she absently clutched Blankie closer to her. Blankie smelled a bit musty and old, and a little different, like something she could not quite recognize. Wherever Matt had stayed with Stick during his adoption period, maybe it had been a cold place. She hoped Blankie had been a good non-talkative friend to him during that time.

“But...”

“Mr. and Mrs. Burke,” she said before scuffing the concrete with the toe of her shoe again, “they died though...”

“Sorry...”

“I'm going by Skye now...no more Mary Sue Poots,” she grinned, “Mrs. Burke gave me that name. Said Mary Sue was stupidly generic. She also said some bad words, but Mr. Burke seemed okay with it.”

“One dollar worth in the jar?” Matt's smile grew a little larger and Skye nodded.

“Yup, maybe two dollars,” she countered and he laughed.

“Stick has Mr. and Mrs. Burke beat. Swears almost every other word,” Matt replied, “I'm kind of used to it, with my Dad and all, but I can imagine the Mother Superior and other sisters turning red each time he spoke.”

“But you're so polite...”

“Only in front of you, Katie, and the other girls here. And the Sisters,” Matt replied and Skye frowned at him. “I can feel your disapproval.”

“Damn straight,” she said before she clapped her hands in front of her mouth. “Oh my God, I'm so sorry...sorry- Crap, no, wait, argh, I keep saying- I took the Lord's name in vain-”

Matt burst out laughing and Skye only glared at him, mortified at her own words for a few seconds before his infectious laughter made her start to grin and soon she too was giggling along with him. She managed to catch her breath and elbowed Matt in the ribs, shaking her head. “Mr. Burke used to say that all the time...guess it rubbed off on me.”

“Glad to know that you're not all Miss-Teacher's-Pet,” he replied and the smile dropped from Skye's face as she realized what he meant. She forced herself to smile a second after that; glad that he was not able to see her as she felt the gut punch of his words to her. That was how Katie and the others thought of her as? Some Miss Goody-Two-Shoes?

“I'm glad you're back,” she said, forcing the cheer in her voice and slinging an arm around her friend as she ducked her head and looked away.

If she had not, she would not have missed the sad apologetic smile on Matt's face, as he too realized what he had said to her. Instead, he returned her hug and squeezed her shoulder gently, feeling the rough painful stone-like feel of Blankie around her shoulders. To him, the woolen fibers of Skye's Blankie felt like a thousand sharp knives scraping across his skin. But he would never tell her that – after all she was one of his only friends in the world.

 

~END~

**Author's Note:**

> In my estimation for Matt's training with Stick and based on my own history with karate; it'll probably take about 2 years, bare minimum, for Matt to reach the level he was during the end of the episode.


End file.
